Tech Death Thursday Premiere: Unbirth – “Procreuthanasia”

Recent studies show that 4 out of 5 people don’t have enough brutal death metal in their diet. Fortunately, Unbirth is bringing you sick new jams to supplement your intake.

I understand why you might find it unpalatable; brutal death is harsh, it’s muddy and obnoxious, and if we’re being frank, a pretty good chunk of the bands who play it suck at it. There is a LOT of homogeneity of bands in the brutal death metal world; it turns out there are only so many ways you can string together diminished 7th arpeggios at 120 BPM on your two lowest strings before they start to sound a little samey. Unbirth seem to realize this, deviating from the norm in some pretty substantial ways, which you can hear in this stream of “Procreuthanasia.”

While they retain some of the hallmarks of the genre- namely extreme speed, gurgly vocals, and intricate riffing- but they mix things up with cleaner post production and much greater use of melody. It’s truly a rare flavor of brutal death that’s sublime when executed properly, and Unbirth nail it here. “Procreuthanasia” is loaded with savage but memorable riffs performed with laser precision. The crisp, clear engineering keeps all of those notes well-defined, and the tone is gritty without being muddy. If you have yet to break into brutal death metal, then this is the perfect gateway; if you’re already a fan, then just sit back and let those blast beats wash over you. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Fleshforged Columns of Deceit comes out on June 1st through New Standard Elite. If you’re hungry for more, there are two other tracks streaming at Unbirth’s Bandcamp page. Be sure to stop by the band’s Facebook and make toilet gurgling noises at them (they’re brutal death, they’ll understand). We’ll return to your regularly scheduled TDT programming next week, so until then,